


On a Bridge

by lmeden



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You fall asleep in your living room, golden sunlight streaming through the windows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On a Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks go to knowmydark for this story. She was absolutely fabulous in helping me brainstorm, giving me invaluable suggestions, and giving me the fastest beta ever as I pulled this up by its bootstraps. Thank you again and again, my darling. Everyone, enjoy!

You fall asleep in your living room, golden sunlight streaming through the windows – no devices nearby, just you and your couch – and wake upon the same couch, in the same position – arm flung up above your head, cheek turned upon the pillow, lips just barely parted – except this time you are in a dream. You open your eyes, squinting unhappily against the bright light, murmur, and turn over so that your face is buried against the couch cushions where it is darkest.

I watch the slim curve of your spine as you shift; its sinuous bends are visible through the thin tee shirt that stretches around you. Your hair tumbles down, dark curls falling over the back of your pale neck and leaving thin strands netted over the top of your skin – a net, or a fence, that blocks my seeking eyes. You sleep for a long time, and I am content to sit here, in a chair that does not exist in your waking world, and watch you.

You never realize that you woke inside a dream, for however brief the instant, and by the time you wake completely I have gone, faded like dust in the wind.

\--

It is a few days before you dream again, but I feel the passing of time only abstractly. You are sleeping upon your couch again, and so that is where you wake. You blink against the bright sunlight, and groan, but roll over, throwing your legs off the couch and standing abruptly. I stay seated, curious.

You walk to the window and lean against the frame, staring outside and rubbing at your eyes. I wonder what you see, but know that my presence will alter your vision, so I remain. You turn, but do not see me.

Across the room there is a door, and you walk to it, grasping the knob without hesitation and walking through. Before it closes, I stand, rush over, and slip through behind you. You have stopped, and so when I follow I end up standing directly behind you, close enough to feel the heat off your skin.

I peer over your shoulder. We are not in another room of your apartment, or in a modern hallway, or anywhere else rational. Instead, we are in a long, stone hall. Intricate carvings climb the walls and hang from the ceiling. Thin shafts serve as windows, sending light pouring through onto the opposite wall. The door clicks shut behind us. I see you smile, and I step forward, around your shoulder.

You look at me, and recognize me, and I see no apprehension in your eyes. Your smile grows wider, and you reach out, seizing my hand.

“Come on,” you say. “It’s my school! I want to show you _everything_.”

Your joy is contagious, and I smile too, for the first time in forever, it feels. You lead me down hall after hall, pointing at carving after carving, hung paintings, and sometimes the roofs of Paris through the windows. My smile soon fades, but my heart remains glad. Your face, flushed and unconcerned, is beautiful.

We meet your friends, and you show me the secret places you have found here – places where you go to be alone, or to sketch, or places that reveal an unparalleled view of Paris – places that you will never see again, now that you have left your school for dreaming. And as we travel through the school, as your dream begins to slowly fade and unravel, and I with it, I don’t tell you that this was once my school as well, and that I knew all these secret places once, long ago, before I died.

\--

You don’t dream of me for a few more weeks, or perhaps I don’t dream of you, as I live in your dreams and see you only then. But it is a long time until I see you again. And this time when you wake, you do not leave your apartment, but stand up from the couch – and why do you never sleep in your bed, I wonder – and move into the kitchen. You begin cooking, and in the midst of making an omelette, look up at me.

“Darling,” you say, and smile. You have been spending time with Eames; I can tell. “Would you like some wine?” You gesture – there is a bottle of wine next to the stove. I lean against the counter, and nod.

You reach for the uncorked bottle and pour into a glass so delicate as to be nearly invisible in the sun. The rosy drink seems to hover in front of me as you hold the glass out. I drink, watching you use a fork to whip the eggs up together until there is no distinction between yolk and white. The wine is odd, I muse.

It is very dry at first, but sweet over the back of my tongue, almost cloying. I have never tasted anything like it. This is the drink of dreams, I suppose. I let the glass slip from between my fingers and push off the counter. It shatters on the floor, splattering my shoes with red. I sit at the small kitchen table, in a small chair. You turn, wide-eyed, to stare at me.

“Ariadne,” I begin, though there is no one else in our dream. “Why have you brought me here?”

“Brought you?” Your voice is uneasy; you are not stupid, and you know what I mean.

Yes, why am I here? Dom has let me go; gotten rid of me finally, except I did not disappear as he thought, and wished, that I would. I am not so easily forgotten. And now I am nested in your mind.

“I am _your_ shade now,” I say, and look up at you. A knife glitters next to your hand, on the counter. I look away from it, stand, and leave. You say nothing. As the kitchen door closes behind me, the dream fades and darkens into nothing.

\--

I am the last to wake, this time. You come upon me as I sleep, curled under the sheets on a very soft bed. When your hand touches my shoulder, I shift, and smile. I want you to be Dom, my Dom, but even before I open my eyes I know that my hopes are in vain.

You lean over, above me. Your dark hair obscures your face, and then you quickly brush it behind your ears.

“Why are you here?” you ask me.

I believe that I asked the question of you, myself, just a few weeks ago. And you did not answer. I cannot answer you now. I move and push myself up on my elbows, and realize that I am naked in this bed. You have dreamt me naked. I quickly pull the sheets up over my breasts, up to my collarbones and, lips pursed, stare at you. You stare back, eyes wide.

“Why are you here, Mal!”

Your voice cracks, and you back away.

“God damn it!”

I can see in the way your hands fist at your sides and fly up to claw at your thick hair that you are fighting the urge to throw something. I wish that you would. I want to see something break besides the people around me.

I push myself up fully and swing my legs over the side of the bed, pulling the sheet with me. It is cold in this room. Bright sunlight streams through the window.

“I cannot help you.” And it is true, for I can do nothing but dream. Always dream.

“No! You are dead. You were dead. I saw you die.”

You whisper the last words and turn to me, desperate. You move to sit on the end of the bed, next to me, but so far away.

I want to wake up. I want to wake up.

There is a heavy lamp on the side table, and I consider for a moment picking it up, swinging it. It would be quick. I stand. The sheets come with me, covering my front, my breasts, but not my back. I walk away from the bed and stop only when the sheets are stretched as far as they will go. I turn to you.

Wake up, I want to say. Wake up for both of us.

“Are you under?” I ask.

You stop the nervous motion of your hands, the darting of your eyes. “No.”

I close my eyes for a moment. Not under. You are not using a PASIV, not dosed with drugs, not dreaming voluntarily and lucidly. Your present dream is your subconscious manifest, and I am part of it. I want out, now.

I drop the sheets and hear the breath freezing in your throat with a sharp gasp. I lunge for the lamp. It is heavy in my hand and it rips free of the wall with ease and I take three steps with it, raise it. You do not move. The base comes down upon your head with a dull thud, and you fall, blink once.

The dream cracks, the sunlight wavers, and everything shatters.

\--

You wake, slowly. Into the dream.

I am ready for you, this time. I have prepared myself to confront you, to force you to kill me finally and forever. But what I have not expected is that you are ready for me. You have discovered my hidden retreat, and you have stolen inside. Unconsciously, or subconsciously, you have placed yourself in both the most powerful and vulnerable of positions.

You have dreamt us both into Limbo.

It is wet. That has always been my first thought, coming here. I pull myself from the surf and stand, pushing my sea-flattened curls out of my eyes. I take in a deep breath of air. Here, I truly feel alive.

The air is thick with humidity. It clings to my clothes and skin, and feels like a welcoming blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I turn to see you splash out of the waves. You stare, wide-eyed, past me and up across the land. Almost as if you haven’t expected to emerge from the sea and be here.

“Where are we?” Your voice is shaky.

Gone are the tall skyscrapers and glittering glass windows of the Limbo that you knew. This is my Limbo – my home away from dreaming, as much as I can ever have such a home. In the place of a vast city, I have cultivated gently rolling land, with a small house perched on a hill some distance away. You are uncomfortable in this country landscape, I can tell. Out of your depth.

Do you know the immensity of what you have summoned into your dreams?

I turn, and my skirt whips around me in a sudden wind. The air is bright. I don’t know why we are here, really. You brought us here with no clear purpose in your mind. Oh, the things I could do to you. I could kill you, here, and allow you to disintegrate into the nothing beyond Limbo. I would almost certainly go with you. Or, a darker part of my mind whispers to me, there is always inception.

But here, I think as I take in a deep breath, piquant with sea salt, here I am the closest to being alive. Here in Limbo, if you kill me, I might just stay dead.

“Nowhere,” I reply.

This is the center of my mind. I live here, in Limbo, when I have none of your dreams to hide in. Nowhere, indeed.

You are approaching, and I hear the sand crunch under your shoes. I look up from the dirt beneath my feet. You are close to me, much less than a meter away. A gust of wind flips your hair up, and it tickles my nose. I want to smile. I want to die. How will you do it, I wonder.

You take another step, close. “I want you out of my mind,” you whisper, voice distraught. And take that last step until we are just millimeters apart. You reach up, fist your hands into my still-dripping hair, and kiss me.

Your mouth is soft, just as delicate as it appears. I don’t close my eyes but watch you, eyelids creased in concentration, eyebrows knit. I raise a hand to your arm and touch it as softly as I can. Slowly, you relax. I see the glimmer of your irises between woven, dark lashes. I turn my head, allowing our lips to brush again. I don’t know what you want from me.

You step back, eyes opening and breathing short. “You’re dead, Mal. Just leave. Get out.”

My lips are still tender from your kiss; sensitive. You are going to kill me with words, then. I turn my face up to the sky and let the wind brush over it, and the sunlight burn it. I feel…alive. And free.

You are walking away and leaving me, but I don’t mind. I can feel myself fading away, and becoming nothing once again.

I sweep away, out over the sand and surf, out past the sea, to where everything is endless.

\--

You fall asleep in your bed, with the curtains drawn against the light, though fingers of white still creep through. I do not find you there, sleeping. Instead you are in the hotel hallway, waistcoat perfectly tailored to your slim waist, jacket buttoned neatly over top of it. Your tie knots tightly against your throat, and your hair is pushed back immaculately, not a strand of it falling across your ears or into your face.

As the door closes behind me and I leave the suite, hand hesitant upon the doorframe, you look up. Your eyes are shadowed, and I cannot read your gaze. You push off the wall that you have been leaning against, and in a smooth movement reach for the gun holstered at your waist.

In the vase full of flowers kindly left by hotel employees in the hall, a knife glitters, incongruous among the soft petals. I dive to the side, seize it and turn, coming up right against you. Your gun is trapped between us. Your eyes are wide, and oh so young.

My knife is very sharp.

\- **end**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] On a Bridge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/554509) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




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